


Exist

by delicatelyglitterywriter



Series: Girl Love/Girl Up [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Family, Autism Acceptance, Autistic Piper, Female Friendship, Gen, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 04:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicatelyglitterywriter/pseuds/delicatelyglitterywriter
Summary: Reality is painful, and May helps Piper come to terms with it.





	Exist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [memorizingthedigitsofpi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorizingthedigitsofpi/gifts).



> **Content warning:** references to ableist language and attitudes

Piper May swings herself gently on the swing, counting the beats as she pushes herself with her feet. The breeze is quite chilly, and Piper pulls her hoodie tighter around herself. She feels...well, she doesn’t exactly know what she feels. She doesn’t know if there’s a name for what she feels.

It’s a sort of combination of anger, helplessness and boredom. But it’s not the kind of  boredom where there’s nothing to do, it’s the kind of boredom one feels when  they’re learning boring facts, or facts they don’t particularly like, from a  textbook.

Piper wants to push herself a bit harder, but that would mess up the nice soothing motion of the swing. So, instead, she shoves her frustration down deep and keeps the gentle rock going, back and forth, back and forth. 

She vaguely registers the sun setting slowly and has the passing thought of how she ought to go home, and that her mom would get worried if she didn’t come home soon. But Piper’s mind is so full of thoughts that it slips past as irrelevant information.

There’s no one else at the playground. It’s dusk, almost dark, and just spring, and so quite cold. She wants to get up and go home, but her brain’s not letting her. It’s still processing, and it’s quite  frustrating. But the swing’s motion is soothing and so keeps Piper quite calm. 

It’s probably dinnertime at her house, but Piper doesn’t think about that. Usually, she’d be thinking about that because she’d have been hungry, but she’d had a big afternoon snack at school and so wasn’t feeling very hungry.

More time passes, although Piper isn’t sre how much exactly. But her brain has slowed down, having processed all the information and sorted neatly. By now it’s almost completely dark, and Piper thinks she should get back home; she knows how dangerous it is to be out at night time, alone. 

She’s also getting quite sleepy, and knows that she mustn’t spend the night outdoors. She could easily catch a cold, pneumonia, hypothermia, or some combination of the three, plus any number of other illnesses if she did. Piper suddenly wants her mom. 

“Piper.”

She draws in a short breath at the sound of her mom’s voice beside her. Surely wishing couldn’t make someone appear out of thin air. Piper turns her head and sees May sitting on the swing beside her. 

Piper gets up and throws herself onto May, hugging tightly. May hugs back just as tightly. 

“Home?” Piper mumbles into May’s shoulder. May nods.

“Home. Come.”

Piper reluctantly lets go and picks up her schoolbag. She then grabs May’s hand and holds on tight, and together, they leave the playground. They’re crossing the street when Piper speaks again.

“‘M sorry, mom. I know it scares you when I do that.”

May doesn’t respond for a moment, and Piper thinks she might have made her really mad. 

“You just needed time,” she eventually murmurs. “It’s okay.”

A few steps pass before May asks, “I take it the showcase didn’t go well?”

Piper had stayed after school for a showcase about ASD put on by younger students. She hadn’t had particularly high expectations; she remembered that her year level had done a pretty crap job when they’d had to research autism. Still, she had gone out of curiosity.

Piper shook her head in answer to May’s question. “No. Not good.”

Beside her, May nods, saying nothing more. Nothing more is said for the rest of the way home. May is the first one to speak when they get through the front door.

“Are you hungry?”

Piper shakes her head again, and May sends her up to her room for a little rest. Piper goes happily, glad for the solitude. 

A little while later, there’s a soft tap at the door. Piper knows it’s May.

“Come in,” Piper calls. But she’s muffled by her blanket, so it sounds more like “Cm’n.”

A minute later, she feels the bed dip as May sits down.

“What wasn’t good about the showcase?” May asks, allowing Piper to lay her head in her lap.

“Lots of stuff,” Piper sighs. When May says nothing, Piper beings to explain. “The information was so baseline. Like, basic stuff, the stuff you hear when you first hear of autism. So, there was a lot of language in it that I didn’t like. Like, ‘suffering from’, ‘struggling with’, ‘sad’ and stuff like that.”

May lets out a soft hum of understanding, prompting Piper to go on.

“And they were meant to have an autistic guy come and speak, but he didn’t make it because he was stuck in traffic. So, a few neurotypicals got up and spoke about autism. The first one was a teacher who said the whole ‘we’re all a little bit autistic’ thing,” at this Piper thumped her thigh with her fist, the first tears burning her eyes, “and then a kid got up and said all the stuff that was presented around the room.”

May begins threading her fingers through Piper’s hair. Realising that May wasn’t going to say anything just yet, Piper continues her explanation.

“It was so bad, mom,” she sighs, letting the first tear slide down her cheek. “I was sitting there, unable to do  _ anything _ . I wanted to stim but I was scared of being exposed, and I wanted to get up and correct all the wrong  and bad stuff they were saying and tell everyone what it really is and what it’s really like, but I couldn’t do that because I know that it’s not polite to interrupt someone, and it wasn’t my presentation. I had to sit as still as I possibly could and I just felt so  _ helpless _ and angry at the same time and…”

Piper trails off, turning her face towards May, some more tears escaping her eyes. May holds Piper’s head close and hushes her as she begins to cry. Piper cries for a while, stopping when she feels all cried out and numb. She turns her face back to the ceiling so that she could breathe, and her mom resumes playing with her hair. 

“Do you know what I was feeling?” Piper asks after a long silence. 

“I don’t think there’s a name for that emotion,” May says softly. 

“Doesn’t there have to be?” Piper wonders. “I thought all emotions had names.”

“I’ve tried to find a name many times,” May says. “But I think that some emotions are too complicated to give names to.”

“Do you mean you’ve felt what I’ve felt?” Piper asks, turning her eyes to her mom. May nods, nod ceasing to fiddle with Piper’s hair. 

“It’s a tightness in your chest,” she muses. “You feel so small and powerless, and you know that it’s because your voice is being taken away by those who don’t really know what it’s like. You feel helpless to do anything about it.”

Piper nods. That’s  _ exactly _ what she had been feeling, she just hadn’t been able to put it into words. 

“That’s the one,” she agrees wearily. “I felt like I couldn’t fully be myself in there. I got out as soon as I could.”

May hums again in understanding. 

There’s another silence before Piper speaks again 

“That’s what the real world is like, isn’t it mom? That feeling.”

May nods sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Piper asks. She doesn’t want to live in a world where she  _ constantly _ feels like she did in the showcase, but she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do to change it. But this thought is in her head in a jumbled mess, and she can’t quite get it into words. But fortunately, May seems to understand.

“You exist,” she says simply. 

“How do you mean?”

May sighs, clearly thinking of how to say what she wants to say. The way to say it seems to hit her suddenly.

“Do you remember that Dr Seuss quote? ‘Today you are you, that is truer than true’.”

“There is no one alive who is youer than you,” Piper finishes. She takes a couple of beats as she figures out what her mom is saying. “So, you’re saying that I just be me, be autistic, and that will be enough?”

May nods, smiling.

“But people won’t like that.”

“People have to be exposed to things they don’t like when things are changing,” May says. “And actions speak louder than words. If you show that you’re comfortable being  _ you _ , they’ll learn to accept you as you are. That’s all the change the world needs.”

Piper nods again. If this one little change happens, then bigger changes will follow, like a stone being dropped in the water and creating ripples outward. That much, she understands.

And so, she exists.


End file.
